Variable Personalization of Search Results in a Search Engine

ABSTRACT

A search engine provides personalized rankings of search results. A user interest profile identifies topics of interest to a user. Each topic is associated with one or more sites, and a boost value, which can be used to augment an information retrieval score of any document from the site. Search results from any search are provided to the user, with a variable control of the ranking of the results. The results can be ranked by their unboosted information retrieval score, thus reflecting no personalization, or by their fully or partially boosted information retrieval scores. This allows the user to selectively control how their interests affect the ranking of the documents.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims the benefit under 35 U.S.C. §119(e) ofapplication Ser. No. 60/557,783 filed on Mar. 29, 2004, which isincorporated by reference herein. This application also incorporates byreference U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 10/646,331 (filed on Aug.22, 2003) and 10/641,489 (filed on Aug. 14, 2003); all of the aboveapplications are commonly owned along with this application.

FIELD OF INVENTION

This invention relates in general to online search engines, and inparticular to personalization of search results.

BACKGROUND OF INVENTION

The current state of the art in online search engines is highly advancedin its ability to retrieve documents (e.g., web pages or portionsthereof, images, etc.) that are responsive to the terms of a query.Search engines today can quickly retrieve specific documents that matchthe terms of the query. However, current search engines often returndocuments that while accurately correspond to the specific terms of thequery, do not in any way reflect the user's underlying interests. Thus,two different users, one who is very interested in sports, and anotherwho is interested in politics, will obtain exactly the same results to agiven query, say “drug testing in baseball,” even though the first usermay be more interested in learning about which teams have implementeddrug testing, while the latter user is more interested in learning aboutlegislation related to drug testing in sports. Thus, there is a need forproviding a mechanism and methodology for personalizing search resultsin accordance with the interests of the users.

Further, while a user may have particular set of interests that may beuseful in processing their search query, a user may not want to alwayshave such interests influence the query results. Thus, it would bedesirable to a provide a mechanism and a methodology by which the usercan variably adjust the degree to which his interests influence theresults of a given search query.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention provides allows a user to variably adjust thedegree to which his or her personal interests influence the presentationof results of a given search query. The present invention has multipleembodiments, including a system for providing a search engine, amethodology for processing a search query, and a user interface for theuser to variably adjust the degree of influence.

For a user's perspective, the present invention provides a mechanism forpersonalizing search results. The user defines a set of interests, forexample as a set of topics or categories of interest to the user, as aninterests profile. The user then submits a search query to a searchengine. The search engine retrieves documents that are relevant to thequery and presents these as search results. At first (though notnecessarily) the search results are ranked without regard to the user'sinterests. This enables the user to see the relevance of the documentswithout influence by his personal interests. The user can variablycontrol ranking of the documents in the search result set. In apreferred embodiment, this is done by direct manipulation of graphicalcontrol element, a personalization control. This graphical element canhave various graphical representations, and in one embodiment it isrepresented as a slider. Adjusting the control element adjusts thedegree to which the results are ranked according to the user'sinterests, as expressed in his interest profile. In response to changesin the position of the control element, the search results are reranked,thereby allowing the user to see how his interests affect the orderingof the results.

In one embodiment, the ranking of search results operates to increasethe relevance score of documents that are associated with the directoryof topics. Each topic in the directory is associated with a group ofdocuments (e.g., websites) which are deemed relevant to the topic. Foreach document (again, website), a boost value is provided whichindicates the degree of relevance of the site to the topic. All pageswithin a given site get that site's boost value. The boost value may beunderstood as a scaling factor that represents the relevance of the siteto the topic. During the query processing, the set of documents isreturned, and scored without regard to their inclusion in the topicdirectory. In addition, a separate score for each document is determinedin which the document's underlying relevance score is adjusted by itsassociated boost value if any, for example by multiplying the relevancescore by the boost value, thereby scaling the relevance of the documentto the query. Generally, only those documents which belong to siteslisted in the directory will have a boosted relevance score, and otherdocuments in the search results will not. The reranking of the documentsin accordance with their boosted relevance scores is then a function ofthe position of the personalization control, either from no influence(where the boost value has no effect on the relevance score) to completeinfluence, wherein boost value for each document is applied 100% to therelevance score, and any number of intermediate levels of application.The user can thus immediately rerank the documents in the search resultsby adjusting the position of the control.

A system embodiment includes a topic directory for providing topics(categories) to a user, a search engine and index for searching indexedwebsites in response to a user's query, and a personalization componentfor determining for the search results at least one (and preferably aset) of rankings of the search results in accordance with the user'sinterests. A user interface embodiment includes a topical directory,with various topics, and graphical controls (e.g., checkboxes) in whichthe user can select topics of interests, and a graphical control thatallows the user to adjust the search result ranking in accordance withhis interest profile.

The present invention is next described with respect to various figuresand diagrams and technical information. The figures depict variousembodiments of the present invention for purposes of illustration only.One skilled in the art will readily recognize from the followingdiscussion that alternative embodiments of the illustrated and describedstructures, methods, and functions may be employed without departingfrom the principles of the invention.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is an entry web page for a search engine.

FIG. 2 is web page for editing a user's personal profile of topics.

FIG. 3 is another web page of topics, and subtopics.

FIG. 4 is another web page of subtopics.

FIG. 5 shows the entry web page for the search engine with the query“stanford”.

FIG. 6 shows the initial results of the search on query “stanford”,along with a control 608 for controlling a degree of influence of theuser's interest profile in ranking the search results.

FIG. 7 shows the ranking of the search results of FIG. 6 after the userhas adjusted the control 608 to an intermediate position.

FIG. 8 shows the ranking of the search results of FIG. 6 after the userhas adjusted the control 608 to a maximum position.

FIG. 9 shows a web page of topics after deletion of a “Computer” topicand selection of a “Music” topic by the user.

FIG. 10 shows the ranking of the search results of FIG. 6 following thechange in topic interests in FIG. 9.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Referring now to FIG. 1 there is shown the entry (or landing page) 100of a search engine. The search engine includes a query entry field 102in which a user enters the terms of a search query. A search button 106submits the query to the search engine for processing. The first timethe user accesses the search engine, he will not have defined a userprofile for personalizing the search results, and a message is displayedto that effect. The user can access the Edit Profile link 104 in orderto establish their personal interests.

Clicking on the Edit Profile link 104 accesses the page 200 illustratedin FIG. 2. This page shows the top level topics 204 of a topicaldirectory 202. The topics in the directory can be, for example, thetopics defined in the Open Directory Project, found at http://dmoz.org/or can be some other topical directory. (In this disclosure the term“topic” and “category” are interchangeable, as are “subtopic” and“subcategory”.) The top level topic links may have a set of subtopics,as indicated by the arrows 206. At any time, the user can begin a searchby clicking on the Start Searching button 208. Clicking on a particulartop level topic takes the user to a page associated with that topic'ssubtopics.

FIG. 3 illustrates the result of this step, where the user has clickedon the topic “Computers” on page 200. As shown in FIG. 3, the subtopics302 of the topic “Computers” have been displayed in the right handcolumn. Next to each subtopic 302 is a checkbox 314. The user can selectthe checkbox 314 to indicate his interest in a specific subtopic.Alternatively, the user can select the checkbox 316 for the entiresubtopic itself, “Computers (General)”. This indicates that the user isinterested in all of the subtopics of the topic “Computers”. The set oftopics selected by the user may be called a user profile, apersonalization profile, or an interest profile. On the left side ofFIG. 3, after the user has selected one or more topics of interest,these topics are listed in the interests field 306. Next to each topicname is a delete link 308 that allows the user to delete individualtopics. The user can also delete all topics by selecting the “Delete allpreferences” link 310.

The subtopics themselves can have any number of additional levels ofsubtopics. For example, FIG. 4 illustrates that the subtopic “Games” hasfurther subtopics 402, “Board Games,” “Card Games,” etc. These werepresented to the user in response to the user clicking on the subtopicarrow 206 next to the “Games” topic label. Again, the user can selecteither the entire subcategory by selecting checkbox 404, or any of theindividual subtopic checkboxes 406. In one embodiment, in addition tothe top level topics 204, there are two subtopic levels. This providessufficient breadth and granularity of topical coverage, without imposingunnecessary computational complexity.

Referring again to FIG. 3, the user has indicated his interest incomputers generally. Clicking on the Start Searching button 208 bringsup search page 100 again, which no longer shows the message requestingthe user to establish a personalization profile. At this point, the userenters a search query in the search field, here the query “stanford”, asshown in FIG. 5. The search engine performs a search of its index andprovides the search results. FIG. 6 illustrates the initial searchresults page 600. Here the search results 602 comprise a set ofdocuments 604, each document indicated by a URL 617, along with a link615 to the page, and a snippet 619 of the page text to show a portion ofthe context to the document to the user. Near the top of the page is thepersonalization control 608. In the context of this application,“documents” are understood to be any type of media that can be indexedand retrieved by a search engine, including web pages, images,multimedia files, text documents, PDFs, and so forth. No limitation asto the scope of the invention is implied by the use of the generic term“documents.”

The personalization control 608 allows the user to adjust the ranking ofthe individual documents/pages of the search results with respect to hisinterests, preferably as expressed in the personalization profile. Thepersonalization control may be explained as controlling a degree ofinfluence or contribution of the user's interest profile to the rankingof the search results. FIG. 6 illustrates the control 608 in anembodiment where it is a slider type control that includes a controlhandle 610 that is moved along a linear dimension between a minimumvalue 612 to a maximum value 614. This type of control 608 is generallyvery intuitive and easy for users to understand how it operates.Alternative embodiments include dial type controls, similarly providinga variable adjustment between a minimum and maximum value, and radiobuttons each with an associated predetermined adjustment amount (e.g.,five radio buttons, associated respectively with 0%, 20%, 40%, 80%, and100%). Those of skill in the art of user interface design willappreciate that other types of controls may be implemented to achieveessentially the same effect.

In the example of FIG. 6, the personalization control 608 is set all theway to its minimum value 612. The search results accordingly are rankedon their relevance to the query and query independent information suchas PageRank, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,285,999, “Method for noderanking in a linked database”, which is incorporated by reference hereinin its entirety and for all of its teachings. Notice that the searchresults are generally related to Stanford University.

Referring now to FIG. 7, there is shown the ranking of the searchresults 602 after the user has adjusted the slider 610 to anintermediate position about halfway between the minimum and maximumvalues. Now, the individual documents 604 are reranked, and those thatare more related to the user's interest (previously identified as“Computers (General)” are more highly ranked. In order to for the userto distinguish the documents that are more related to his interests,those documents are indicated by a personalization icon 618 next to thelink text 615. Notice that with the intermediate position of the slider610, about every other document is a personalization result, though thisis not required. Notice further that the snippet 619 text has text thatrelates to computers (e.g., “hacking”) even though that term was notincluded in the original search query.

Referring now to FIG. 8, there is shown the ranking of the searchresults 602 after the user has adjusted the slider 610 to its maximumposition 614. First, in this example all of the documents 604 in thesearch results 602 reflect the user's personalization profile, and areannotated with the personalization icon 618. Second, the documents inthe search results relate to computers and Stanford University, therebyreflecting the user's interests in computers, as it relates to the query“stanford”. For example, the first two results are related to “hacking”at Stanford; the next three documents relate specifically to variouscomputer science projects at Stanford. Thus the third document is forStanford's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the fourth document isfor Stanford's Center for the Study of Language and Information, and thefifth document is for Stanford's Database Group. The remaining documentsare likewise related to the “Computers” interest of the user. Noticefurther, that what was previously the first (e.g., most relevant)result, the link to Stanford University's home page, when there was nopersonalization applied (FIG. 6) and when only intermediatepersonalization was applied (FIG. 7), no longer even appears in the topeight results.

In the examples of FIGS. 6-8 the user can dynamically adjust the rankingof the documents in real time, without the search engine having torecompute the search results. This further aids the user's ability toexplore the search results.

As shown on FIGS. 6-8, an Edit Profile link 616 allows the user to editthe interests in his user profile at any time. FIG. 9 illustrates wherethe user has returned to the topic directory page 200 as illustrated inFIG. 2, and deleted his existing topic interest in Computers, andcreated a different interest in “Music”. The user then again selects theStart Searching button 208. The search engine provides an updated set ofsearch results, which documents will be the same as before, since thequery term has not changed. However, as of the last search, the user haspositioned the control 610 for full personalization, and hence thesearch engine applies this setting and ranks the documents according theexisting (and new) personalization profile, this time for “Music.” FIG.10 illustrates the dramatic difference this makes in the search results.Here, the top six results are all related to music and arts, and none ofthe previous results relating to computers make the top of the searchresult list. This shows how the user's personalization profile cansignificantly alter the ranking of a given set of documents.

In one embodiment of the invention, the personalization of searchresults is provided by the following methodology. Those of skill in theart of search engine design can readily understanding the basicstructure of a search engine and its operation in which this methodologycan be implemented.

1) When the user selects topics (categories), they are added to a cookiecontaining a list of his interests IN (where IN is short for“interests”). The interests can be expressed as either text tokens (e.g.“computers”), or as indices into a directory, where each topic/subtopichas an index number. When the user accesses the site, the systemretrieves this interest list from the cookie. Alternatively, the sitecan provide a user registration page, in which the user registers with auser name and password, and the user's interests are stored at thesearch engine site in a database, and retrieved in response to the userlogin.

2) Each time the user issues a search query Q, the list IN is sent to afrontend web server.

3) Then the frontend web server issues two requests to a backend searchengine (Q, null) and (Q, IN), which returns to the frontend web servertwo results sets, R_base (normal) and R_in (personalized), respectively.

4) The base query (Q, null) is the same as searching for Q on the searchengine without any personalization, so R_base is the result set that thesearch engine would normally return in response to the query. As notedabove, the search results accordingly are ranked on their relevance tothe query and any other factors, such as PageRank, as disclosed in U.S.Pat. No. 6,285,999, “Method for node ranking in a linked database”,which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety and for. allof its teachings.

5) The personalized query (Q, IN) contains the user's interest list. Thesearch engine follows a similar processing control flow as a normalquery, but it activates a personalization component during the scoringfunction, which “boosts” documents that are relevant to the set ofinterests IN.

In one embodiment of the invention, these boosts are implemented using aset of maps (one map for each topic/subtopic in the directory), of theform:

-   -   {Site→boost}

So for example, the category “Health” has a map of the form

-   -   {Site→boost}

which contains entries such as:

-   -   nih.gov→5.8    -   cdc.gov→7.9    -   med.stanford.edu→3.5

where nih.gov, cdc.gov, and med.Stanford.edu are various sites that havebeen determined (either manually or automatically) to be related to thetopic “Health”. In other words, for each topic in the directory, thereis a set of sites that have been determined to be relevant to the topic,and for each of these sites, a boost value is defined.

The boost for the sites listed in the topical directory is generallydetermined as follows:

-   -   a) A “site graph” is generated where nodes of the graph are        sites (basically, pages on the same host) and edges between        nodes are weighted based on the number of pages from one site        that link to pages on another. This same type of graph can be        used to compute all topic boost maps.    -   b) For each topic in the directory, say “Health”, a number of        sites are selected as “start sites” S0 whose home page is listed        in the Open Directory. For example, for a university like        Stanford, start sites may be selected as any site ending in        .stanford.edu.    -   c) A computation is run in two passes:        -   i) first identify a set of sites S1 that are linked-to            heavily by those sites in S0, with each site in S1 assigned            a weight according to how heavily it's linked-to by sites in            S0.        -   ii) then identify those sites S2 that are linked-to heavily            by those sites in S1, weighted as with St    -   d) The sites in S2 are boosted with their assigned weights.

When a personalized query comes in with an interest set (e.g., {Health,Music}), then the personalization component consults the respectivemaps, and then for query results (i.e. documents) that are in thesemaps, the personalization components boosts the IR score for them, sothat they would get ranked higher. The IR score is the informationretrieval score that the search engine provides for each document, andcan be a function of document relevance and other factors, such asPageRank.

For example if http://www.med.stanford.edu/research/ were one of theresults for query Q, and IN included “Health,” then that result wouldget a multiplicative boost of 3.5 to its IR score, because that page ison the site med.stanford.edu. For multiple interests, the values in thecorresponding maps are multiplied together for a combined effect.Further details of one implementation for determining the boost forsites in the directory boost map are described in U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 10/646,331 incorporated by reference herein.

6) The frontend web server receives R_base and R_in. R_base representsthe results 602 the user sees when the personalization control 608 isset at 0 (or its minimum position 612). R_in represents the results 602the user sees when the slider is at its maximum position 614, e.g. 10.In one embodiment, the control has 11 positions, but any number ofpositions may be used. The rankings that are shown to the user between 0and 10 are interpolated; this means using R_base and R_in, thepersonalization component constructs intermediate rankings (R_1 R_9) bymoving each individual result along a virtual path from its positionwhen the control 608 is at its minimum position to when the control 608is at its maximum position.

7) How the slider effect is provided to the user:

The frontend web server appends the results in R_in that are not inR_base to R_base to get a list of all unique results (either in R_baseor R_in) called R_all. The frontend web server then assigns consecutiveidentification numbers to the results in R_all that serve asidentifiers. The frontend then sends to the user's browser two items:

-   -   a) the mapping {id→result} for each of the results in R_all,        containing for each document in the results its identification        number; and    -   b) N vectors that denote the rankings the user should see, in        terms of result IDs, where N is the number of positions of the        slider, and each vector represents the ordering of the results        based on the degree of personalization. In this example, there        would be 11 vectors corresponding to positions 0 through 10 of        the control 608. In one embodiment Vector 0 is [0, 1, 2, 3, 4,        5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10], reflecting the un-personalized ranking of        the results, assigned with the local IDs starting with R_(—)0.        Vector 10 is the ordering in the fully personalized results        R_in; for instance, it might be [15, 17, 5, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9,        10], where documents 15 and 17, for example, are documents in        the relevant map of the topic directory whose IR score was        boosted according to the boost values in the map, and the value        associated with the control 608's position. Transmitting the N        ranking vectors to the client allows the client browser to        quickly recomputed the rankings, rather than imposing that        calculation on the server.

8) Finally, Javascript code in the result page causes the user's browserto reorder the search results using the appropriate one of the 11positional ranking vectors in response to the user changing the positionof the control 608. Further details of one embodiment of steps 6-8,above, are described in U.S. application Ser. No. 10/641,489,incorporated by reference herein.

The present invention has been described in particular detail withrespect to one possible embodiment. Those of skill in the art willappreciate that the invention may be practiced in other embodiments.First, the particular naming of the components, capitalization of terms,the attributes, data structures, or any other programming or structuralaspect is not mandatory or significant, and the mechanisms thatimplement the invention or its features may have different names,formats, or protocols. Further, the system may be implemented via acombination of hardware and software, as described, or entirely inhardware elements. Also, the particular division of functionalitybetween the various system components described herein is merelyexemplary, and not mandatory; functions performed by a single systemcomponent may instead be performed by multiple components, and functionsperformed by multiple components may instead be performed by a singlecomponent.

Some portions of above description present the features of the presentinvention in terms of algorithms and symbolic representations ofoperations on information. These algorithmic descriptions andrepresentations are the means used by those skilled in the dataprocessing arts to most effectively convey the substance of their workto others skilled in the art. These operations, while describedfunctionally or logically, are understood to be implemented by computerprograms. Furthermore, it has also proven convenient at times, to referto these arrangements of operations as modules or by functional names,without loss of generality.

Unless specifically stated otherwise as apparent from the abovediscussion, it is appreciated that throughout the description,discussions utilizing terms such as “calculating” or “determining” or“identifying” or the like, refer to the action and processes of acomputer system, or similar electronic computing device, thatmanipulates and transforms data represented as physical (electronic)quantities within the computer system memories or registers or othersuch information storage, transmission or display devices.

Certain aspects of the present invention include process steps andinstructions described herein in the form of an algorithm. It should benoted that the process steps and instructions of the present inventioncould be embodied in software, firmware or hardware, and when embodiedin software, could be downloaded to reside on and be operated fromdifferent platforms used by real time network operating systems.

The present invention also relates to an apparatus for performing theoperations herein. This apparatus may be specially constructed for therequired purposes, or it may comprise a general-purpose computerselectively activated or reconfigured by a computer program stored on acomputer readable medium that can be accessed by the computer. Such acomputer program may be stored in a computer readable storage medium,such as, but is not limited to, any type of disk including floppy disks,optical disks, CD-ROMs, magnetic-optical disks, read-only memories(ROMs), random access memories (RAMs), EPROMs, EEPROMs, magnetic oroptical cards, or any type of media suitable for storing electronicinstructions, and each coupled to a computer system bus. Those of skillin the art of integrated circuit design and video codecs appreciate thatthe invention can be readily fabricated in various types of integratedcircuits based on the above functional and structural descriptions,including application specific integrated circuits (ASIC). In addition,the present invention may be incorporated into various types of videocoding devices.

The algorithms and operations presented herein are not inherentlyrelated to any particular computer or other apparatus. Variousgeneral-purpose systems may also be used with programs in accordancewith the teachings herein, or it may prove convenient to construct morespecialized apparatus to perform the required method steps. The requiredstructure for a variety of these systems will be apparent to those ofskill in the art, along with equivalent variations. In addition, thepresent invention is not described with reference to any particularprogramming language. It is appreciated that a variety of programminglanguages may be used to implement the teachings of the presentinvention as described herein, and any references to specific languagesare provided for disclosure of enablement and best mode of the presentinvention.

Finally, it should be noted that the language used in the specificationhas been principally selected for readability and instructionalpurposes, and may not have been selected to delineate or circumscribethe inventive subject matter. Accordingly, the disclosure of the presentinvention is intended to be illustrative, but not limiting, of the scopeof the invention.

1-36. (canceled)
 37. A computer implemented method, comprising:providing, from a web browser, a search query to a server; receiving, atthe web browser: a mapping between an indicia of each of first documentsresponsive to the search query and an identification identifying each ofthe first documents, and a representation for each of two or morerankings of the first documents, wherein for each representation: arespective ranking for the representation is based on one of two or moredistinct degrees of influence of an interest profile that is differentfrom the distinct degrees of influence that other representations arebased on; and the representation includes the identifications associatedwith the first documents included in the respective ranking; wherein theinterest profile comprises data representing a plurality of topics ofinterest to a user; receiving a selection from the user of one of thedistinct degrees of influence of the interest profile; and displayingthe representation of the ranking associated with the selected one ofthe distinct degrees of influence of the interest profile using themapping and the representation of the ranking associated with theselected one of the distinct degrees of influence.
 38. The method ofclaim 37, wherein each of the first documents is associated with arespective information retrieval score and a respective boost values,where each boost value represents a degree of relevance of the documentto a distinct topic in the plurality of topics.
 39. The method of claim38, wherein each of the first documents is associated with a score basedon the information retrieval score for the respective first document,the respective boost value for the respective first document, and adistinct degree of influence of the interest profile.
 40. The method ofclaim 39, wherein the first documents are ranked based on the score ofeach of the first documents.
 41. The method of claim 37, wherein the webbrowser selectively displays each ranking without sending a request tothe server for a new ranking.
 42. The method of claim 37, wherein thedegree of influence corresponds to a personalization input mapped to amanipulation of a control.
 43. The method of claim 37, wherein thecontrol is one of a slider, dial, or two or more radio buttons eachcorresponding to a respective distinct degrees of influence.
 44. Themethod of claim 37, wherein each ranking of the first documents includesa personalization icon next to each first document, wherein thepersonalization icon is associated with an interest that is included inthe interest profile of the user.
 45. A computer readable storage mediumencoded with a computer program, the computer program comprisinginstructions that, when executed, operate to cause a computer to performoperations comprising: providing, from a web browser, a search query toa server; receiving, at the web browser: a mapping between an indicia ofeach of first documents responsive to the search query and anidentification identifying each of the first documents, and arepresentation for each of two or more rankings of the first documents,wherein for each representation: a respective ranking for therepresentation is based on one of two or more distinct degrees ofinfluence of an interest profile that is different from the distinctdegrees of influence that other representations are based on; and therepresentation includes the identifications associated with the firstdocuments included in the respective ranking; wherein the interestprofile comprises data representing a plurality of topics of interest toa user; receiving a selection from the user of one of the distinctdegrees of influence of the interest profile; and displaying therepresentation of the ranking associated with the selected one of thedistinct degrees of influence of the interest profile using the mappingand the representation of the ranking associated with the selected oneof the distinct degrees of influence.
 46. The computer readable storagemedium of claim 45, wherein each of the first documents is associatedwith a respective information retrieval score and a respective boostvalues, where each boost value represents a degree of relevance of thedocument to a distinct topic in the plurality of topics.
 47. Thecomputer readable storage medium of claim 46, wherein each of the firstdocuments is associated with a score based on the information retrievalscore for the respective first document, the respective boost value forthe respective first document, and a distinct degree of influence of theinterest profile.
 48. The computer readable storage medium of claim 47,wherein the first documents are ranked based on the score of each of thefirst documents.
 49. The computer readable storage medium of claim 45,wherein the web browser selectively displays each ranking withoutsending a request to the server for a new ranking.
 50. The computerreadable storage medium of claim 45, wherein the degree of influencecorresponds to a personalization input mapped to a manipulation of acontrol.
 51. The computer readable storage medium of claim 45, whereinthe control is one of a slider, dial, or two or more radio buttons eachcorresponding to a respective distinct degrees of influence.
 52. Thecomputer readable storage medium of claim 45, wherein each ranking ofthe first documents includes a personalization icon next to each firstdocument, wherein the personalization icon is associated with aninterest that is included in the interest profile of the user.
 53. Asystem comprising: one or more computers; and a web browser configuredto: providing, from the web browser, a search query to a server;receiving, at the web browser: a mapping between an indicia of each offirst documents responsive to the search query and an identificationidentifying each of the first documents, and a representation for eachof two or more rankings of the first documents, wherein for eachrepresentation: a respective ranking for the representation is based onone of two or more distinct degrees of influence of an interest profilethat is different from the distinct degrees of influence that otherrepresentations are based on; and the representation includes theidentifications associated with the first documents included in therespective ranking; wherein the interest profile comprises datarepresenting a plurality of topics of interest to a user; receiving aselection from the user of one of the distinct degrees of influence ofthe interest profile; and displaying the representation of the rankingassociated with the selected one of the distinct degrees of influence ofthe interest profile using the mapping and the representation of theranking associated with the selected one of the distinct degrees ofinfluence.
 54. The system of claim 53, wherein each of the firstdocuments is associated with a respective information retrieval scoreand a respective boost values, where each boost value represents adegree of relevance of the document to a distinct topic in the pluralityof topics.
 55. The system of claim 54, wherein each of the firstdocuments is associated with a score based on the information retrievalscore for the respective first document, the respective boost value forthe respective first document, and a distinct degree of influence of theinterest profile.
 56. The system of claim 55, wherein the firstdocuments are ranked based on the score of each of the first documents.